An important part of the costs that companies assume to improve salaries in line with inflation is not reaching the pockets of workers. This is how the Catalan employers' association for small and medium-sized enterprises, Pimec, details it in a report published this Thursday dedicated to the so-called "fiscal drag, or progressivity in the cold. It is the dysfunction that arises when salary increases associated with price increases do not have a fiscal replica in the form of IRPF deflation. "A perversion occurs, and that is that we raise salaries, but this does not translate into more purchasing power," denounced the president of the business association, Antoni Cañete.

An artificial intelligence model from OpenAI, the North American multinational creator of ChatGPT, caused an "unprecedented incident" in global cybersecurity. As the company acknowledged in a statement, one of its training models broke free from its limitations and attacked Hugging Face, a company also dedicated to AI.

Catalonia aims to make the definitive leap into the market in the quantum industry. After years focused on "generating knowledge," in the words of the Secretary of Digital Policies of the Generalitat, Maria Galindo, the country is experiencing a moment of "quantum effervescence" that allows it to aspire to compete with international powers. According to a sectoral report prepared by Acció, the agency for business growth of the Department of Business and Labour, this industry invoiced 91.4 million euros in 2024 – the last year with definitive data; a limited figure, but one that the sector celebrates within the framework of still incipient deep technology.

In mid-June, United States President Donald Trump issued an order that seemed unthinkable: after weeks of tensions with Anthropic, the company that created the artificial intelligence model Claude, the Oval Office forced them to close their most advanced tools, Mythos and Fable, to any user who was not North American. Although the blockade has already been resolved, experts and markets are still trembling: Trump then demonstrated that he has his finger on the "on and off switch" for global technologies, comments Miquel Martí, executive director of Tech Barcelona. The temporary detention at Anthropic was irrefutable proof of the evidence that Europe, like so many other international players, does not control its digital and technological future, nor its present.

News at various levels in the Catalan wine sector. Just weeks after the renewal of the presidency of the Regulatory Council of Cava, which placed Marta Vidal at the head of the designation of origin (DO) of Spanish sparkling wines, the employers' association of producers will have to change its president. The direction of Barcelona Wine Week, the main wine event in the country's capital, is also being reshaped. Outside the vineyard, PepsiCo is undertaking an appointment in its human resources department, and Ikea in Spain seeks to build "an increasingly relevant, close, and accessible brand".

The plenary session of the Chamber of Commerce of Barcelona, meeting this Thursday, has narrowly approved the reform proposed by the executive committee to expand from two to ten the paid vocal seats granted by greater voluntary contribution, the so-called silver chairs. The body was completely divided in the session, with a tie of 29 votes in favor of the measure and 29 against. The decision was unblocked by the casting vote of the president, Josep Santacreu.

The housing crisis is also a drag on business growth. This is according to a report prepared by the SME Observatory of the Catalan employers' association of small and medium-sized enterprises, Pimec, which indicates that one out of every two businesses in the country has renounced applying growth measures – from expanding staff to opening new production centers – due to the residential pressure suffered by both the company and the workers.

The executive of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, led by president Josep Santacreu, is nearing the end of its term with a burning issue. The highest governing body of the public law corporation announced an agreement last week to increase the number of voluntary economic contribution memberships, known as "silver chairs", from the current two to ten. The proposal, which Santacreu himself had considered since his victory in the 2023 chamber elections, has notable support within the plenary but also a significant number of detractors. The final say will lie with the entity's plenary, which will meet next Thursday and, according to sources consulted by ARA, there is currently no certainty about the outcome of the vote.

Catalan agriculture does not seem to find a moment of peace with Brussels. After the 2024 demonstrations and the battle that last year's approval of the trade agreement with Mercosur represented, the country's agricultural sector has clashed with the European Commission's proposals for the multiannual financial framework — the Union's budget — for the 2028-2034 period. The project by Ursula Von der Leyen's executive includes profound changes in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Changes that have displeased neither the regional entities nor the Government, who have staged their unity this Tuesday against a large part of the aspects of the Twenty-Seven's project. "We do not agree with the cuts, nor with the elimination of the two pillars, nor with a recentralization of competences," enumerated the Minister of Agriculture of the Generalitat, Òscar Ordeig, at an event organized at the department's headquarters.

The Generalitat has approved this Tuesday its new business innovation strategy for the period 2026-2030. The Government's new roadmap for innovative activity in the country will activate an investment package of 78 million euros this year alone, 30% more, to accelerate research and development in the territory, train and attract the necessary technological talent, or facilitate the business adoption of disruptive technologies. According to the executive's calculations, public investment dedicated to the sector will mobilize private capital worth 3.7 times more; that is, about 300 million euros. The first call, as explained by the executive, will open next week, with an available amount of 17 million euros.

The technology industry has become one of the central pillars of the Catalan economy. The economic figures of the ICT sector (information and communication technologies) have grown non-stop in the last decade, according to the 18 editions of the annual barometer published by the Technological Circle of Catalonia. The latest edition records an unprecedented business record: in 2025, technology companies in the Principality exceeded 30.6 billion euros in revenue. This is an increase of 13% compared to 2024, when the previous ceiling was also broken with more than 28 billion euros in income. Last year's total is equivalent to 9.1% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP), half a point more than the previous year.

News on Inditex's board of directors. The Galician fashion giant – parent company of chains like Zara, Bershka, or Stradivarius – held its shareholders' meeting this week, which approved the incorporation into the highest governing body of a well-known profile on the Ibex-35; specifically, in the broad financial chapter of the selective. The banking sector has also announced new faces in its technology segment, with signings at Openpay and Revolut.

The European regulation of cryptocurrencies, known as the MiCA regulation, has reshaped the digital asset landscape on the continent. Far from the wild west that had dominated the early years of the industry, Brussels has managed to put fences around the field. To the point that the major player in the market, the giant Binance, has not been able to acquire the community permit to operate in the EU, and retired on July 1st. The new framework imposed by the European Commission aims to offer security to investors, and part of the sector crypto has taken the regulation as a business loophole. Catalonia is proof of this: the first cryptocurrency platform created in the country, Venga, received the MiCA license last week to operate in the region with a model far removed from the market's image. "We are an app for people who are new to the space. We built it from scratch so you can enter it easily," explains the company's executive director, Michael Stroev, in conversation with the "Companies.

Catalonia continues to expand its computing capacity to tackle the advance of artificial intelligence. The company Submer Group, based in Barcelona, will invest more than 1 billion euros to install a new data center in Flix (Ribera d'Ebre). The technological infrastructure will be located on the grounds of the former Ercros chemical plant. The center, as the company assured in a statement, will be "sustainable and state-of-the-art," and will dedicate its activity to boosting investment in AI-based applications and services.

Europe continues to accelerate to finance its still scarce technological champions. The European Investment Bank, the Eurogroup and institutional investors from various member countries have joined forces to open a new chapter in the European Tech Champions Initiative (ETCI), a program to articulate capital that reaches the venture investment vehicles of the Twenty-seven to finance start-ups ("start-ups)and scalable (scale-ups) with more potential on the continent. The EIB has announced a second installment of the initiative, with the aim of attracting 15 billion euros to fuel European innovation.

The Catalan aerospace industry has consolidated among "the most dynamic in southern Europe". This is confirmed by a report prepared by Acció, the agency for business growth of the Generalitat, which raises the sector's turnover in 2024 – the last year with available data – to 237 million euros. According to the study, presented this Wednesday at La Llotja de Mar, the number of space companies in the Principality has tripled since 2019, to 83. In total, the Catalan space industry employed around 1,822 people at the end of 2024. The strength of this technological segment underpins Barcelona's bid to host the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in 2029, the world's most important fair for orbital activities.

The European Commission is looking for ways to spur European capital to foster its start-up ecosystem. The European Commissioner for Startups, Innovation and Research, Ekaterina Zaharieva, acknowledges a series of obstacles that still hinder the development of innovative sectors in the Twenty-seven. Among the most serious, she has pointed out the regulatory and financial fragmentation of the Union. She has also regretted the lack of venture capital to finance the large rounds and market exits with which many startups culminate their growth. Even more so with the advancement of the startup profile: in the last decade, the startup landscape was eminently digital and service-oriented. Now, with a focus on deep technology, much more capital-intensive, the problem becomes even more serious, according to sources in the technology sector consulted. A technology that, in its development phase, is more than present in the EU: "We have everything we need to lead," Zaharieva states.

The general blackout of April 2025, like all traumatic events for the population, changed many things. Spanish strategic infrastructures, from communication towers to power plants, and essential services such as hospitals, have strived to find alternatives to stay afloat when there is no electricity. Most of these hotspots have traditional diesel generators, which cover their short-term needs, but also place logistical limits on activity. Eliminating these obstacles is the raison d'être of Atom H2, one of the most acclaimed startups in the Catalan ecosystem, which closes the electrical wound with renewable generation and a patented hydrogen technology. "We want to be the new standard for generators," says Anna Martín, one of the project's co-founders, in conversation with ARA.

ThUS artificial intelligence models, which have comfortably dominated the market since the launch of ChatGPT, no longer seem so unattainable. In mid-June, the start-up Chinese Z.ai, a Tsinghua University spin-off that has been at the forefront of Beijing's technological strategy, has released its latest product, GLM-5.2. The analysis published by the company itself places it at a similar level to the main products of OpenAI and Anthropic laboratories. Market analysts have confirmed its potential; the cybersecurity company Semgrep, for example, has stated: "We have another Mythos at home." Experts consulted by ARA acknowledge that a general independent valuation is needed, but indicate that, based on the published specifications, GLM-5.2 would be "no more than 1% below" American competition.

Grifols reorganizes the structure of its biopharmaceutical business, which contributes the most to the company's revenue. As announced in a statement, it will create "differentiated organizations" for biopharma for the United States, the Catalan company's main market, and for the rest of the world. According to the pharmaceutical company, this move serves to "further strengthen the operational and financial independence of the subsidiaries." In this way, plasma collected in the United States will be used to cover the country's market, while that extracted in the rest of the world will go to the European market and other environments where the company operates.